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ORATION, 

Delivered by S.O.Griswold, Esq., at the Centennial 

Cel' bration in the City of Cleveland, 

July 4th, 1876. 



1274 



ORATION, 

Delivered by S. 0. GRISWOLD, Esq., at the Centennial 
Celebration in the City of Cleveland, 

JULY 4th, 1876. 



Mr. President and FelloiD Citizens : 

The phenomena of movement in the 
heavenly bodies could not fail to arrest the 
attention of men in the primeval days. The 
natural impulse of those untaught men was 
worship, which lifted upward their hearts, 
conveying their thoughts from material to 
spiritual corceptions, and inducing a culture 
whicli slowly led them from savagery to 
civilization. 

In the earlier times this culture extended 
beyond the mere alternation of days and 
nights and led them to the observation of 
the recurrence of longer periods, and to the 
divisions of tin: e, known as months, years, 
cycles, centuries. These divisions of time 
naturally became the points from which to 
date events that peipetuated themselves in 
the world's memory. But in the progress of 
the race, as by natural metaphor, this order 
was reversed, and great events themselves 
became the marking points in time and his- 
tory. 

In that great city of antiquity, which sub- 
dued the cultured east and the barbaric 
west, add for so many centuries imposed its 
law and rule upon the world, time was offi- 
cially reckoned from its own beginning. 
For ordinary purposes they adopted the 
received cbronoloey, and their own 
greatest genius reformed the calendar, 
and furnished the rules for its universal 
use, but all public acts were ofBciaily dated, 
Anno Urbis Conditm — from the year of tlie 
founding of the city — and in this designation 
there was a continued appeal to the pride 
and patriotism, alike of rulers and people. 

When the nations of Western Euiope 
emerged from the barbarism into which they 
relapsed after the withdrawal of the central 
power of the Empire, they had nothing in 
their own national experience upon which 



to found a chronological succession. The 
chiefs of that hierarchy which succeeded 
the imperial with their spiritual sway, adopt- 
ed for general use the Julian tables; and 
these Western nations, more submissive to 
priestly than political supremacv, readily 
accepted their i.nstruction, and tooK with 
them, as their initiil po'nti a reckoning, that 
which they were taught to believe was the 
year of the Divine Advent to earth in their 
behalf. 

Offspring of these Western nations, the 
people of America continued the use of the 
common calendar, but the founders of the 
new form of Government, when they or- 
dained the same in this Western Hemis- 
phere, took a new departure in time. With 
more than prophetic prescience, they be- 
lieved that here would arise and grow an 
Empire of the People, mightier and more 
beneficent than that of Rome. Animated by 
that great example, and influenced by the 
same motives, they intended all acts of their 
Government, so long as it endured, should 
bear proper relation in time and history to 
that great event,— the Birth of the Nation, 
and so they practiced; and whenever an act 
has been or is done in the name of the Gov- 
ernment it is always recited as "Done in the 

year of the Independence of the United 

States of America." 

And we, fellow citizens, are here assem- 
bled to celebrate the Hundredth Anniversary 
of that great event. It is in the highest de- 
gree appropriate that this celebration should 
be conducted by the performance of relig- 
ious ceremonies, by music, by civic and mil- 
itary display, and by all the modes in which 
intelligent men may testify their reverence, 
their gratitude, and their joy. It has also 
been recommended by Congress and the 



CEN'TENXIAL. 



President of tbe United States that on the 
occasion of this celebration, in each town 
and city, there should be prepared an ad- 
dress, embodyina: the local history of the 
place, the same to be deposited in the 
archives of the Nation. In this city of ours 
there exists a Society, the object and pur- 
pose of which is to collect and preserve all 
the material relating to the history of the 
place from tlie earliest period to the present 
date, and the distinguished President of 
that association has prepared with great care 
and labor that history, and his work is set 
forth in an elaborate volume, which is al- 
ready deposited in the National library. 

It was therefore requested of me by your 
Committee of Anangvments that this recom- 
mended duty be ou my part omitted, and in 
their behalf to submit to j'ou a few words 
such as I should deem fit and appropriate 
to the time and occasion. 

I doubt not, the thought uppermost 
in the minds of all, is the change dur- 
the Century. On the 4th day of 
July, 1776, Cleveland was not; and now 
.behold the fair city with all its pride 
and beauty in which we are assem- 
bled — located on a site which would have 
delighted even a Greek Eponymist — itself a 
livinsr exhibition of the progress, the de- 
velopment, and the results of the cen- 
tury. If one were possessed of the paint- 
er's skill, or engraver's art, there might 
be presented a scene which would convey 
to your minds by a single glance all the 
grand features of that contrast which a vol- 
ume of words would fail to express. Here, 
would be shown thp broad lake, its wateis 
unvexed by keel or prow, washing a tenant- 
less shore, with a river debouching from a 
vast forest into it, whose sluggish waters 
were slowly forcing iheir way through the 
bar at the mouth of the channel. In the 
forest glpde. might be seen, a few savage men 
maintairing a precarious conflict for life 
with equally savage beasts. There, might be 
seen, the ocean line, its border fringed with the 
habitations of men, and their overhanging 
sun and sky would be darkened bj' smoke 
of the battle of contending armies. In the 
center of that habited region, thrre would be 
seen a fair city, the abode of peaceful men; 
in the city's midst, a council cham- 



ber, in which was gathered a company 
of Elders, whose form and appearance would 
indicate that Plutarch's men had returned 
to earth again. The chief of that council 
would be holding in his hand an unrolled 
scroll upon which all eyes were intent, and on 
that scroll, in letters all of iivinir gold, flash- 
ing with a brighter than electric light, 
those never to be forgotten words. "All men 
are created equil." There, leading out from 
the inhabited land, might be seen a proces- 
uion, the leader of which was a surveyor, 
with his compass and chains; following him 
a hardy emigrant, ax in hand, with his slow 
team of oxen bearing his family and scanty 
household goods; then would appear an 
established highway with moving teams of 
better appointed travelers; then, the artificial 
inland river with its slow-moving burdened 
craft; then, the rushing locomotive.followed 
by a great company which no man 
might number. Here, might be seen, the 
woodman making a clearing in the forest, 
and beyond, the cabin, the school house, the 
church, fair fields, plains, cities, and stretch- 
ing out an illumined vista horizoned by ihe 
millennial gates, the groupings of which scene 
none but a God might frame, and only the 
genius of Homer fitly describe. 

I find it most diflacult,from the many strik- 
ing features which this great contrast of the 
century presents, to select a topic for re- 
mark in the brief time allowed me in 
tbe performance of the ceremonies 
of the day, but I have chosen, and I pur- 
pose for a few moments calHng your atten- 
tion to the Continental Congress, as con- 
nected with the subject of Government by 
*he Representative Assembly. 

In the early days, when men were limited 
in numbers and association to the family, 
the village, or tribe, the problems of gov- 
ernment were lew and simple; but when 
numbers increase, ideas enlarge, the vil- 
lage becomes a city, and the tribe a nation, 
these problems become all-absorbing ques- 
tions. How to combine individual liberty 
w'th central authority; to protect the simple 
and guileless from the artful and cunning; to 
insur*^ peace, order, and security to life and 
property, and yet not fall into the meshes of 
tyranny; on the one hand to be free from 
the evils of anarchy, and on the other from 



CONTINENTAL CONGRESS — THE REPRESENTATIVE ASSEMBLY. 



the evils of despotism — are questions which 
have occupied the best thoughts of the 
best men in all civilized States. 

I need not dwell upon the disturbing 
forces against which no theory can provide, 
or upon the thousand practical attempts at 
the solution of these problems. I hesitate 
not to say, and 1 believe it to be the unbi- 
ased judgment of the "candid world," that 
of all the modes of government which the 
wit or wisdom of man has yet contrived, 
the best and most successful is the Repre- 
sentative Assembly. 

1 do not deny the excellencv of the An- 
cient City. I acknowledge the g!ory of tiie 
Periklean State, but the strain was too 
great for human nature to endure, where 
every citizen is continuallj' called upon to 
exercise the functions of a legislator, a 
judge, and a soldier. For a short period the 
system shone with great splendor and its 
light still illumines mankind, but it was 
adapted only to limited territorial posses- 
sion, and reqviired its citizens to be support- 
ed by the libor of a servile class. 

T acknowledge the peace and security of 
the Empire. Under its benign and peace- 
ful sway, local and provincial enmities were 
subdued, free intercourse established 
throughout the world, and the sure 
foundations laid for the steady development 
of all the arts and ideas which lead 
to a more perfect civilization. But the Em- 
pire at its best estate operates as a thrall 
on human energy and thought, and is only 
successful when its chief is a Hadrian; but 
if the emperor be a Caligula, it would seem 
as if the world had been given over to the 
power of the Prince of Darkness. 

The Representative Asa.em-blv appears to be 
the just mean. Under it the whole electoral 
body nte called upon to exercise some politi- 
cal duties. To the great majority, these duties 
are not absorbing, and leave them the 
full opportunity for their own best 
development in mind, body, and estate. 
Those, who are called upon to ex- 
ercise the functions of rulers, are them- 
elves members of the electoral body, 
and, in theory, are selected because of some 
special qualitication of fitness for their re- 
spective stations. They can have no inter- 
est, as a class, antagonistic to the general 



electoral body, and hold their station by the 
choice of their fellow electors. 

The history of the origin ot this mode of 
government is lost, in the lost early history 
of our race. Its rise and progress can only be 
traced in the svirvivals of ancient customs. 
Its germ undoubtedly existed in those an- 
cienti councils of the German forest, when 
the yea was pronounced by the clashing ot 
buckler, and the nay by equally significant 
dissent. 

It is the great contribution of the Teutonic 
race to the common civilization of the world. 
It was an idea, when once conceived of, too 
valuable to be lost. It possessed of itself a 
vital force, which would not permit it to be 
destroyed. It survived among the people 
during the period of the Roman domination, 
nor was it buried in the barbarism wh'ch 
ensued. It reappeared in the Gemot and 
Witan and found its first, fullest develop- 
ment in the Parliament of England, whose 
people were the growtli of the graftings of 
the best stocks of the race. 

Of all the famous Assemblies which have 
ever convened, none can favorably compare 
with the Continental Congress save the Long 
Parliament, and the French National Assem- 
bly. Tne Continental Congress was more 
successful and fortunate than either of these. 
The Long Parliament degenerated into a 
mob, and was dispersed with contemptuous 
words by the servant itself had chosen to 
execute its command, and he, after vainly 
attempting to establish for it a successor, 
was compelled to uphold the totterino- state 
by his own vigorous will. The French Na- 
tional Assembly shrank into a murderous 
club, from wnose bloody hands the nation 
was only saved by submitting itself to the 
rule of a dictator: and for nearly a hundred 
years that brilliant nation has passed through 
the greatest alternations, and only in our 
day, under the bitter mortification of a 
foreign occupation finally established the 
Repiesentative Assembly. 

The Continental Congress, though more 
favored by fortune, was no produce of 
chance, or of sudden inspiration It was 
the result of centuries of experience. It 
was the natural outgrowth of the race, 
with special cdvantages of time and 
place. In the first century following 



CONTINENTAL CONGRESS— THK REPRESENTATIVE ASSEMBLY. 



the discovery ot America, the Spanish na- 
tion was the toremost power of the world, 
and the energies of that people had been di- 
rected to Central America, their chief 
object the gain of wealth; to aid the old and 
not to establish a new empire. Durinsr the 
first half of that century the English nalion 
had been engasced in internal conflict. Its 
whole people had been aroused by the great 
religious awakenine of the Reformation, but 
these internal conflicts had for a time great- 
ly weakened the state. During the long 
sway of Elizabeth the nation had recuperat- 
ed, and the capacity of the race and its gen- 
eral development were shown by the 
apptaraace in a single generation of such 
men as Raleigh, Bacon, and Shakespeare. 

When the Armada was destroyed England 
stepped to the front rank; and all those 
eager eyes which behold the future turned 
their gaze to this Western Hemisphere. 
The first emigrants were of course mere 
adventurers for gain, or religious en- 
thusiasts, who combined in themselves 
some ot the best as well as worst 
elements of human nature, but they were not 
the stuff out of which nations are formed. 

The troublous times which preceded the 
Great Rebellion induced hither an immense 
emigration. I lately noted, in a publication 
containing the official register of the port of 
London, that in the months of April and 
May of the year 1635 there sailed from that 
port alone bound for isew England and Vir- 
ginia, twenty-two ships loaded with passen- 
gers. In one of these the names of 
two hundred and eleven passen- 
gers are given in full, and those 
names have been perpetuated, and some of 
them may be read to-day on tl.e signs in 
your business streets. In the len jears, from 
1630 to 1640, the great bulk of the emigra- 
tion of the first half of the century took 
place. I also noted in the same regis- 
ter, that these persons who embarked had ob- 
tained from the proper parish officer a certifi- 
cate, either tbat they naa paid cr were not sub- 
ject to the subsidy (ship money) tax. They 
were men of the substantial middle class of 
the people upon whom this burden fell 
grievously. They had not the same stake 
in the soil as the great leaders of 
the opposition to the Government, 



and when they emigrated hither, they came 
with the intent of building up in Massachu- 
setts, Connecticut, and Virginia a new Eng- 
land, freed from the existing thraldoms of 
their native .and. They had the average 
education of the middle class. The influence 
of the Reformation had awHkened and quick- 
ened their moral natures, and they had had 
experience in civil rights as jurymen and 
mem(:)ers of municipal and village councils. 
If not rich in worldly goods, they had two 
priceless possessions; a devout resrard for 
the moral rule, and a knowledge of the com- 
mon law. They came generally by com- 
munities, the large majority accustomed to 
agricultural pursuits, l)ut they endeavored 
always to unite and join with them in their 
enterprise, the mason and the carpenter, the 
tanner and the shoemaker, and all the trades- 
men needful to form a complete industrial 
society. There came also with them re- 
ligious teachers who had generally received 
the culture of the Universities, and lawyers 
who had been trained at the Temple. They 
were, in the main, a devout, indus- 
trious, thriving people, and above all 
a race of surpassing valor. They were 
brethren and next of kin of the famous 
Ironsides of Cromwell; soldiers, who, m 
fair and open fight on their common native 
soil, overcame cavalier, noble, and prince; 
who swept as with the whirlwind the hardy 
Scot at Dunbar, and trampled as on the chaff 
of the threshing floor the Irishry of Muns- 
ter; and who, when their seryice ended, 
quietly disbanded and fused with tlie mass 
of the people, and in the succeeding 
years when in community any one was dis- 
tinguished above his fellows "for diligence 
in business, sobriety, and regularity in the 
pursuit of peace," it was to be noted of him 
that he had been a soldier in the regiments 
of Cromwell. Owing to the advantages of 
soil and climate their natural increase was 
great and there was added to them a contin- 
ued accession by emigration. 

In the forms of government provided by 
the charters of the different colonies, the 
principles of representative govern- 
ment were always included; indeed, 
in the framing of those charters, 
and in providing modes of constituting the 
Representative Assembly, the wisest and 



CONTINENTAL COX.iKKSS — THE REPRESENTATIVE ASSEMBLY. 



purest scholars and statesmen of England 
were otten consulted, and some of these 
charters were so excellent as to have re- 
mained w'thout change long after the Revo- 
luuon. 

It was not till after the subjugation of the 
Canadas, to which the soldiers of the colo- 
nies had greatly contributed, that difficulties 
began to arise. Hitherto they had either 
been left to themselves, or if interfered 
with, it had been done with good will, and a 
purpose to aid and foster their growth. The 
oppressive acts of Parliament, of which the 
colonist complained, were rather the result 
of prejudice and ignorance than of any real 
design to injure. The King of England was 
not a man of cruelty, or possessed of any 
purpose to be unfaithful to any of the prin- 
ciples of the British Constitution, which, 
by his coronation oath, he had sworn to up- 
hold. It is to be noted that most ot the 
charges set forth in that terrible arraign- 
ment which has just been read in your 
hearinsr, were acts done after the conflict 
had ripened into war. But the King was 
grossly ignorant, and was obstinate to a de- 
gree almost amounting to insanity — in fact, 
he subsequently became insane. The amus- 
ing stories related by our citizens 
who travel abroad, of the present extreme 
ignorance in regard to this country on the 
part of apparently intelligent people, are 
but a faint shadow of the general ignorance 
which then prevailed. 

A. few far-seeing statesmen realized the 
actual condition of affairs, and most nobly, 
but in vain, sought to stay the hand of the 
Government, which was daily proceeding 
from bad to worse. In 1774, matters had 
proceeded so far thai a Congress, deputed in 
part by the Colonial Assemblies, and in part 
by poUtical conventions, met at Philadel" 
phia to consult for the common good. They 
passed a prea^mble and resolutions, asserting 
their rights under the British Constitution, 
and recited the numerous acts of Parliament 
which they deemed to be in deroga- 
tion of their rights under the com- 
mon law. They recommended to the people 
modes of peaceful resistance, and adopted a 
memorial to the British Government. The 
idea of a separation had not yet pervaded 
the minds of the people, and they looked up 



to England as to a venerated mother. In 
her soil were entombed the bones of their 
fathers and kindred, and they felt themselves 
to be partakers in her splendid fame. They 
had witli alacrity sprung to arms at her call 
to battle against the ancient enemies of the 
nation. They eagerly marched under her 
standard to drive the French from the Can- 
adas, and were equally ready to join in ex- 
pelling the Spaniard from the Antilles and 
Central America. They claimed none of the 
oidinary exemptions from military duty. 
The Major-General of the forces of one of 
the colonies, an ancestor of one of your 
most eminent divines, was aged sixty- 
seven. In the journal left by him, in 
which he kept a record of the long and 
successful campaien against Louisbnrg, the 
most valuable part is that which evinces the 
unabated vigor of his body and mind and 
his profound rearard for the Colonial As- 
sembly, from which he had received his 
commission. Another distinguished officer, 
being dissuaded from accepting a command 
offered by the same Assembly in the expe- 
dition against the Spaniards, on account of 
his family and the dangers of a trapical cli- 
mate as well as the dangers of war, replied: 
"lean leave my family with Divine Provi- 
dence, and as to my own life, it is not left 
with man to determine the time or plaoe of his 
death. I think it best not to be anxious about 
it. The great thing is to live and die in our 
duty. I think the war is just. My call is 
clear. Somebody must veqture, and why 
not I as well as another?" The voice of 
the General Assembly was to him as the 
call of God to the Prophet of old, and in the 
same spirit of obedience he answered, 
"Here am I." Death relieved him of his 
command, and his grave was soon hidden 
by the rank growth of that tropic soil, but 
his faith was well founded, his 
family have continued, and one of his di- 
rect descendants is a citizen of your city, 
who by his great acquirements and contri- 
butions to geologic science, has made 
your city distinguished as a home of learn- 
ing. 

At the beginning of the latter half of the 
century, the Hollanders and Swedes, who 
were the predominating element of the 
Middle States, had become indistinguishable 



CONTINENTAL CONGRESS— THE REPRESENTATIVE ASSEMBLY, 



from the common mase of the citizens. 
The former were a tough and hardy race, 
which had been trained to a high develop- 
ment under the leadership of the iruc, 
princely house of Orange; the fathers of the 
latter had followed the victorious banner of 
Gusiavus Adolphus, lo upholc the cause of 
religiotjs liberty against the combined forces 
of the Papacy anc the Empire, and both 
were of the original stocks of the 
Anglo-Saxon combination. The small ele- 
ment of the Celtic and Huguenot class, ky 
their religious training ^vas lilted to assimi- 
late with the rest of fhe people. 

Undoubtedly, the comparatively lean soil 
and more severe climate of Massachusetts 
had forced her citizens to fisheries, com- 
merce, and other aciive pursuits, and given 
to them a more adventurous spirit, which 
with their numbers and wealth, naturally 
gave them the leadership; but on the whole, 
the inhabitants were a homo^eaeous people. 
For more than a century their civic 
education had been promoted by 
the rule of the Colonial Assemblies. 
In his great speech in Parliament in favor 
of conciliation of the Colonics, that famous 
orator and statesman, who. it ha:^ been said, 
possessed in the highest degiee the facultv 
of perceiving th3 distant and the past, as if 
it were actually present, mentions the 'act 
of the number of the copies of Blackstone's 
Commentaries exported hither, and statistics 
show that more volumes were here annually 
sold than in the rest of the kimrdom. Their 
experience in the Indian and French wars 
had accustomed them to the use of arms, 
and trained them in the art of war. Of all 
these things, the blind Tory majority which 
ruled Parliament and supported the King 
were profoundly ignorant. The memorial 
of the Congress of 1774 was treated with 
contempt, and regarded as a sign of weak- 
ness. In all the pages of history, there is 
no record of greater folly tlian this, by 
wbich the affections of such a loyal body of 
citizens were alienated. The issues rapidly 
led to open conflict in whicli blood was 
shed. 

At once the several States took immediate 
steps lor the armament of I'.ie f.eoole. The 
farmer left his plow; the artizan his toil; the 
merchant his pursuit of gain; the doctor his 



patients; the lawyer his clients, and all went 
forth incited and supported by the praye-s 
of priest and woman. 

On the 10th of May, 1775, the Conti- 
nental Consrress assemt)led, deputed by the 
different States to assume the general con- 
trol. They came together without prece- 
dent, or any fixed rules of authority. They 
had no legally established constituency, but 
one in fact existed, which they did not fail 
to recognize, and for which they boldly as- 
sumed to act. 

So during the centuries, in the womb of the 
continent had been gendered a nation which 
knew not itself, whose birth, to the aston- 
ishment of the world, was accomplished b^^ 
the bloody pangs of war, and the Contlnent.al 
Conaress, as by divine commission, be- 
■stowed upon it baptism and a name. 

Time would fail me to recount the history 
of that Congress. " It raised armies, ap- 
pointed generals, levied taxes, negotiated 
foreign loans and treaties," carried the war 
to a successful termination, and finally ex- 
torted from unwilling England a full recog- 
nition of the perfect legitimacy of this new 
memlwr of the great family' of nations. 
I cannot stop to speak of the diffi- 
culties with which it had to 
contend, of the noble manner of its 
own dissolutiou, or its unselfish ac- 
tion in aiding to submit to the 
people for adoption the New Constitu. 
tion which was to provide in its stead a per- 
petual successor with fixed and defined pow- 
ers, the lack of which had been the jrreat 
source of its own weakness. I cannot 
dwell tipon the individual character of its 
members, or even of that member whom it 
aopointed to be general of its armies; that 
Man. of men, who, when the victory was 
won, refusing all compensation for his long 
service, modestly returned to it the sword 
of command, and quietly returned to the 
home he so dearly loved, and engaged in 
those avocations and pursuits of peace 
which he enjoyed with so much zest. 

I cannot, however, forbear to mention one 
of its acts of wi.se statesmanship. Apprecia- 
ting the importance of the great Northwest, ^ 



of which little had then been explored be- 
yond the present State of Ohio, they settled 
and adjusted the conflicting claims of the 



CO^fTINENTAL COXGRESS — THE EEPEESENTA.TIVE ASSEMBLY. 



different States to the title of the land, and 
adopted for the Government of the t'^rritory 
the Ordinance of 1787; and to enable the in- 
coming inhabitants to enjoy the "blessings 
of liberty," which the new Constitution was 
ordained to secure, they appointed their own 
distinguished President fobe its Governor — 
to protect tliem by his valor and to teach 
them by his civil experience. 

I should, however, do injustice to my 
tbeme if I did not make brief comment 
upon those two great truths they so boldly 
asserted and su resolutely maintained — the 
civil equality of man, and that the consent 
of the governed gives sanction to Govern- 
ment — those truths upon which Government 
by the Representative Assembly is based- 
After the lapse of a century we can hardly 
realize the importance of the declaration of 
these political principles. It is still more 
difficult to appreciate the force and potency 
of the b3lief, in the world at large, of pre- 
cisely the contrary doctrine. The origin 
and persistence of this contrary be- 
lief, popularly called "the Divine 
Tight of Kings," is one of the most remarka- 
ble chapters in the history of the human m- 
telJect. 

In ttie early days men, unable to give an 
account of their own ;;^enesis, and perceiving 
the manifest distinctions in the gifts of mind 
and body, readily yield to the claim of di- 
vine origin by the superior man. It is an 
assumption so flattering to natural pride and 
vanity that the claimants came to believe 
their own fiction. It is on 3 of the survivals 
of Aryan barbarism, and the belief has per- 
vaded all branches of the race. The Ho- 
meric kingly heroes all are given a genealo- 
gy ascending to Olympus. In historic times, 
the royal houses of Sparta and Macedon 
called themselves Heraclidse and traced 
through their four\der, their origin directly 
to the All-Seeing Zeus. The other leading 
families of Greece claimed a like descent 
from him. or some other Olympic Divinity. 
Even the great Julius, so cultivated and so 
enlightened, cherished the weak fancy that 
his ancestral mother was the Divine Beauty, 
Aphrodite. The same belief was current in 
the old Teutonic tribes. Those long- 
haired warriors, with all their natural in- 
dependence, conceded the right to the 



family of the Divine Amali to furnish 
a Chief, or King for their selection. 
This survival of the barbaric days had 
been fostered by the priestly class 
which, under a like claim of divine author- 
ty, always sought to rule, or to ally itself 
with the ruling power. A hundred years 
ago there pervaded nearly the whole civil- 
ized world a belief that something of sa- 
credness was attached to the kingly office. 
Down into the present century the idea, that 
tliere was some occult and mj^sterious power 
connected with the succession to the throne 
of the Holy Roman Empire, still affected the 
imagination of men. 

This general belief was most rudely as- 
sailed when the Long Parliament, after ar- 
raignment and trial, brought the head of 
the faithless Charles to the block. As a legal 
entity it was effectually eradicated from the 
British Constitution, when the Convention 
of 1688 deposed the foolish son of the faith- 
less father and called to the throne a 
prince, who solemnly pledged himself 
to recognize the representative assemblies 
of the nation as the supreme law-making 
power. Yet thousands of pious hearts 
were greatly outraged at this violent de- 
position of one whom they believed held his 
office by divine right, and had received a 
visible token thereof when the sacred oil was 
poured upon his head by a high priest 
who, they also believed, held his office in 
the right of an unbroken succes- 
sion from the Son of God; and they 
yielded to the new dynasty a mourn 
fui allegiance, quieting their tender 
consciences with the fona belief that in the 
new dynasty there could still be a found a 
trace of tlie blood of the royal race of the 
ancient ^thelings. 

The Continental Congress struck at the 
very root of this belief and laid down as an 
axiom — as a fundamental principle not to be 
questioned — that all men are created equal. 
Henceforth in the State no man was to be 
regaraed as having an inherent right to rule. 
High and low, rich and poor, gifted and 
simple, all were to be equal before the law. 
In the domain of conscience men might 
still assert divine commission to teach, and 
in default of production of the original 
parchment of authority, persuade their 



8 



CONTINENTAL CONGRESS — THE KEPRESENTATIVE ASSEMBLY. 



followers by such secondary evidence as they 
could furnish, but such evidence was never 
to have comi^etency in the State. Men 
might still follow in private belief those who 
claim such divine authority, but iu the 
State, priest, and believer, were all to 
stand as equal children of the Common 
Father. 

These truths of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, of course, are to be taken with 
the necessary limitations applicable to all 
political doctrine. They were intended to 
apply only to men who, by culture, had at- 
tained to the height of understanding the 
obligation of the moral law. Nor, because 
they failed to include in their state the ne- 
gro and the Indian, does It follow that tLe 
one could be rightly held as a slave, or the 
other exterminated as a savage beast. They 
laid down the truth for intelligent man- 
hood, and as such to be applicable 
to all men, for all time. With this princi- 
ple as the basis, they anticipated the time 
when the untaught African by training and 
education, and the savage Indian by the sub- 
jection of his natural fierceness, might both 
attain the capacity to enjoy the benefits of 
the Government thus established. 

Of all the progress and achievements of 
the century, nothing is more notable than 
the steady growth of these truths, and the 
adoption, as a necessary CDnsequent, of the 
mode of government by the Representative 
Assembly. It has been established in all the 
nations of Western Europe, in United Italy, 
in resurrected Greece, and even among the 
most progressive peoples of the Turanian 
race. It matters not whether the Executive 
be chosen by univeral suffrage, or selected 
from a particular family, which is made the 
depository of the executive office, whether 
the executive officer be called President, 
Marshal, Prince, King, or Emperor, in all 
these Nations, the exercise of the executive 
functions is performed in obedience to the 
Representative Assembly as the lawmaking 
power. How much of all this is due to the 
culture and progress of the people, or how 
much of their culture and progress is due 
to this form of government, are questions 
for the student of history, upon which I 
cannot dwell. 

It mav be claimed our nreat success 



is more due to the Federal than to the Rep 
resentative system, but the idea of a Federal 
Union was no novel device. It had been long 
known and used equally by pure democra- 
cies, and by nations under monarchical 
rule. It was first applied in the later peri- 
od of the Greek City, and was evolved in 
that struggle when the freedom of Greece 
was being crut^hed between the upper and 
nether millstones of Macedon and Rome. 
It was adopted here because of the accident 
of different charters for the different Co- 
lonial States. This and the sparseness of 
the population have combined to extend 
the Federal bond, and this Federal system 
is perhaps the only mode in which the prin- 
ciple of representative government couid be- 
apolied to so vast a country. 

The occasion will not permit me to dis- 
cuss the methods of selecting the members 
of the representative body, or the needed 
reforms in existing methods; and upon the 
quesiion whether the system can be adapted 
equally to mere municipal government, 
and to an universal state, I can only 
make ,a passing remark. The city of 
modern civilization is only a limb, not the 
soul of the State. In it the greatest social 
distinctions arise. It is also the refuse of 
the criminal class, and the home of those 
who follow occupations for which there is 
no opportunity in rural li*e. Hitherto the 
application of this mode to mere municipal 
rule has not been a pronounced success. In 
its exercise there has occurred misrule, ex- 
travagance, oppressive taxation, betrayal of 
trusts, and disgraceful corruption. The su- 
perficial observer, comparing our greatest 
city most unfavorably with London or Paris, 
does not hesitate to declare this mode of 
government, for municipal rule, a failure. 
It should be remembered that the breaking 
up of a new soil is always productive of 
malarial diseases. I cannot stop to discuss 
the hopes or conditions of reform, but 
merely suggest that even in that great and 
illy governed city of the United States the 
opportunity for a free education is furnished 
to every child. 

The possibilities of this system for 
an universal empire I leave to political 
theorists. For myself I do not be- 
lieve it can ever become a practical question. 



CONTINENTAL CONGRESS— TUE REPRESENTATIVE ASSEMBLY. 



9 



Distinct nationality is one of the conditions 
of iauman existence, and impracticable diffi- 
culties arise in tlie attempt to unite what na- 
ture itself divides. The opposing inter- 
ests will be too great to permit one body to 
make equal general laws. The chain will 
bi'eak by its own weight. The cosmopoli- 
tan IS not the ideal man. I appreciate the 
tine culture which eradicates all local man- 
ners and prejudices, but its tendency is to 
the elimination of the higher virtues. The 
earthly millennium is an empty dream, for 
always in human nature there is an inlier 
ent weakness, and in the blossoming of the 
highest manly virtues there is ever present 
a scent of provincial flavor. 

The moral of my theme — the conditions 
of the permanency of this mode of govern- 
ment — must be obvious to all. In our gen- 
eration we have witnessed somewhat of a 
lowering in the character of the Represent 
ative Assembly, both in the States and Na- 
tion, and the air is rife with the charges of 
their corruption. These, however, are but 



mere passing clouds. As are the people, so 
will be the character of their representa- 
tive bodies. We also in our generation, 
with mingled tears of pride, joy, and sorrow, 
have witnessed tiiat the ancient valor of the 
people is undiminished; and may we not 
hope in this Centennial year for a renewal 
of the ancient civic virtues. The condi- 
tions of these, and of their continuance are 
moral and intellectual culture It should ever 
be borne in mind that the race is renewed 
in weakness; each infant contains m h'mself 
all the fierce instincts of the original savage, 
and he can only be brought to perfect man- 
hood by training and education. To keep 
him in his proper line, those centrifugal 
tendencies must be checked and balanced 
by these opposing forces. Let the state, by 
invincible and never-changing will, educate 
the intellect of youth, and, trusting to the 
higher social instincts for the moral culture, 
we may fondly hope that the success of the 
Centurv will continue through ttie ages. 



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